Research Topics

Signal Transduction

R&D Systems offers a range signal transduction research tools. These include total and phospho-specific antibodies, microplate-based kits to detect the levels of total and phosphorylated proteins, and kinase arrays designed to measure the phosphorylation of multiple proteins simultaneously. Also available are assays to study enzyme or transcription factor activity, and kits to assess the levels of second messengers including cAMP, cGMP, and nitric oxide.

Signal transduction is the process by which a cell recognizes changes in its environment and transforms that signal into modifications in cellular activity and gene expression. These processes are often initiated through receptor ligation or stress, and may involve a cascading series of intracellular biochemical events that are amplified and integrated to achieve the desired cellular response. For instance, activated kinases can catalyze the transfer of a phosphate group to serine, threonine, or tyrosine residues on target proteins and regulate protein activity, localization, and protein-protein interactions. Activities modified by phosphorylation can in turn be terminated by the phosphatases. Signal transduction cascades may also involve non-enzymatic second messengers including cyclic nucleotides (cAMP and cGMP), Ca2+, and lipids. These intracellular signaling events regulate virtually all cellular activities. Therefore, it is critical to have quality tools that make it easy to study factors involved in signal transduction.